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Looking at it now – at Jason, barefoot in the kitchen, with coffee in one hand and a spatula in the other – it’s hard to believe there was ever a time Tim didn’t know what ordinary life could feel like. What being with Jason could feel like. Not some stolen moments in dirty alleyways, frantic breaths behind crime scenes or blood-heavy touches over the sound of police sirens, but mornings like this one. Something enduring. Something slow, quiet, full of nothing. Full of everything.
A life that asks nothing more than to be lived.
It feels like warmth. Like the slow hum of the radio playing a half-familiar song in the background, and the smell of something browning in the pan. Like the ring on Jason’s finger catching the sunlight as he lazily reaches for sugar. Like Tim stealing his slippers and pretending that he didn’t.
Tim’s coffee is cooling too fast on the balcony. He forgets to drink it. He’s too busy watching Jason through the window, somewhat still mesmerized by the sight.
It all feels too real. That’s the strangest part. That the peace has eventually arrived. That it stayed. That it didn’t wilt away like everything else that once rooted itself in Tim’s chest and bloomed teeth-first.
But it hadn’t always been like this.
The thought creeps in without permission – slow, unkind, a little too fresh. Bittersweet in the way recent memories are, like bruises that are so tender they still hurt when you press too hard. Like petals in his throat, soft , impossible to ignore. The tug of the red string that had once been so tight around his wrist, it felt like the whole hand might go numb if he wasn’t careful enough.
There was a time Tim couldn’t believe any of it. A time when love wasn’t something he lived with, but something he survived. He remembers the weight of silence, how it piled up in his lungs, how he tried swallowing around it but really couldn’t. Flowers had rotted in him once, those sharp, curling blooms that had tried to choke him from the inside out. They had bled him dry, taking from him until he couldn’t speak without them scraping against his throat.
He used to sob into the sink each time he bled something beautiful. He used to pray for something smaller than this.
And now, here they are.
Jason is wearing one of his old shirts, one Tim barely remembers owning, faded cotton stretched across the bulk of his shoulders and the soft swell of his stomach, hugging the places he’s grown into. It doesn’t fit, not really, but somehow, it suits him. He looks… like permanence. Bliss. Like the kind of man who forgets to measure the grounds, but still makes the coffee exactly how Tim likes it. Like someone who’s learned how to stay.
Tim watches him through the window, his own reflection overlaid against Jason’s body like a memory still trying to find its place. Jason turns his head, as if he’s sensed the weight of Tim’s gaze. Says something Tim doesn’t catch. It could’ve been I love you so much. Could’ve been I’ll join you soon. Could’ve been something else entirely. It doesn’t matter. Tim figures it all means the same, the important things always do with Jason.
He closes his hands tighter around the coffee mug, letting the last waves of the heat ground him. Tries not to think about how easy it is to lose all those things. How fleeting everything good seems to be when you’ve been trained to expect the pain. When your body knows loss like a second language.
He tries to believe in this instead – in this shirt-thieving, dad-bod-sporting, barely-burned-breakfast version of Jason. The one who stayed. The one who wakes up besides him and makes the coffee too strong sometimes and still calls him Rob from time to time, just to see the way Tim’s mouth curls.
It’s perfect, Tim’s – theirs.
Peeking through the glass pane, he watches Jason move around the kitchen like it’s always belonged to him, like he doesn’t have anything more important to do but prepare Tim’s breakfast. He still remembers the first time Jason told him he was done. Retiring , he’d said, like it was as simple as shrugging off a dirty suit and throwing it in the laundry. But nothing had ever been simple with Jason, not the missions, not their fights, and definitely not the way things started between them.
Because they hadn’t started in any romantic way. Not even close.
Just a few nights here and there. After patrols, after arguments, after a close call that neither of them wanted to talk about. A handful of shared moments, bruised knuckles and broken noses. They were still new to the bond back then – barely a few weeks of knowing the red string tied them together like a wound half-stitched and messy. They were friends back then, maybe. Enemies, more often. Neither, most of the time. And never lovers, not really. For all the heat between them, they never once kissed, not back then. That was the line. The mouth too sacred, too tender, a thing to bruise. It wasn’t love. A convincing stop, maybe, but not yet the destination.
Through the glass, Jason catches his eye again. Smiles like it’s nothing. Like it’s easy. Like they didn’t claw their way to this through fire and fear and too many false starts.
Tim doesn’t smile back, not quite. But his chest aches with something close. Something like’Im glad you stayed. Something like I wish you didn’t still feel so far away.
He takes a sip of his coffee and lets the taste linger on his tongue. It’s bitter, too cold now. He drinks it anyway. The cup is chipped near the rim, Jason dropped it once during an argument that wasn’t really an argument, just two scarred animals circling the same wound. And he remembers–
The string around his wrist vibrates like it’s caught on something. Like it’s tightening. Like Jason somehow hears his thoughts and tries to put a stop to them, but Tim’s never been good at listening.
“Hey,” Jason says, voice low and suddenly there.
Tim doesn’t even have a chance to finish his initial thought, to let himself soak up the sting. He figures that he doesn’t need to. Jason’s hand sneaks up his shoulder, slides down to close over his hand, pulls the mug gently away. Tim looks up.
“I was–” Tim begins.
“I know,” Jason cuts in. Not unkind, just blunt. Like he’s not going to let Tim drift away so early in the morning. “Stop thinking about it. Not today.”
Tim tries to answer. Some deflection, maybe an apology, something to push the moment back where it came from. He thinks about saying he’s fine, about pretending this softness doesn’t catch him off guard every time. Like the thread between them doesn’t glow brighter when Jason looks at him like that, like he didn’t once cough petals into his hands every night for almost half a year and try to swallow the stems. But Jason doesn’t let him. Doesn’t give him enough room to think, to lie, to build the wall back up. Just takes his hand and holds it, because that’s all he’s ever needed to do.
Tim swallows hard, throat raw with the memory of flowers that bloomed without permission, with the weight of all the days they let the thread between them go slack, pretending they didn’t see it or feel it burning against their skin. And maybe that’s the worst part, knowing how long he tried to live with the ache instead of reaching for what was already his.
“You don’t have to keep checking on me,” Tim finally decides on saying, something neutral enough. “I’m fine.”
“I know, sweetheart. I just– Sometimes, I remember how it used to be. How it almost–”
“Don’t.” Tim leans in, the distance collapsing between them. Closer than close. Closer than memory. “Not now. Not when I’ve got you in front of me.”
And before Jason can say anything else, before either of them can drift too far into the ache of the past, Tim just kisses him. No hesitation. No preamble. Just his mouth on Jason’s, full of warmth and steadiness and something that tastes like a promise finally made good.
It’s not their first kiss, not by a long shot, but it feels better. Because this one isn’t soaked in grief or survival or the frantic need to do something before it’s too late. This one isn’t born from fear. It’s want. It’s choice.
When they pull apart, the thread between them, quiet and patient, stays loose. Not pulling. Not taut. Just there. A reminder. A scar finally healed over. A soft kind of proof.
Jason is the one who speaks first, his voice low enough to fold into the morning.
“What got you so gloomy earlier, Rob?”
Tim exhales, more breath than laugh. His fingers reach again for the mug, cold now, but still something to hold onto.
“I was thinking about our first kiss,” he admits quietly, like saying it aloud might bruise the sentiment. “How long it took. And how badly I wanted to kiss you way before that.”
Jason shifts beside him, fingers trailing toward where the thread winds between them. The light catches on his wedding ring, turns it into something almost holy.
“I get that. I really wanted to kiss you. That day. When we found out.”
Tim’s heart stutters, like old wounds remembering how they used to ache. He waits, lets the silence stretch just long enough to let the truth breathe and expand.
“Oh,” he sighs. “Why didn’t you?”
Jason doesn’t answer right away. Of course, he doesn’t. He’s never answered quickly when it matters most. His truths are slow things, heavy things, the kind you have to earn. Tim’s learned to wait for them, learned that the silences between Jason’s words are part of the answer.
Jason, Tim’s come to realize, is a man made of those silences, quiet stories he never quite tells. They used to live in the set of his jaw, in the press of his finger against the trigger, in the way he watched the city like it’s a thing to be conquered. Maybe that’s why Jason’s hands always seem to find their way to the simplest tasks, gardening, cooking, reading. Things that pull him out of the dark. Things he can tend, fix, make whole again, just as he’s always known how to undo more than just his guns.
And he absolutely knows how to undo Tim, too.
“You remember that night?” Jason finally asks, and his voice sounds like it’s caught somewhere between then and now.
“Of course I do,” Tim says, and he means it more than anything.
“You had blood in your mouth. From the mission. You freaking lost your tooth. And you smiled like it didn’t hurt. I looked down, saw the thread between us, and all I could think was… God, of course it’s you. Little psycho.”
The memory settles over Tim like ash. That rooftop. That thread. That unspoken question between them, red as blood and just as damning.
“So why didn’t you?” he asks again, quieter this time.
Jason looks away, toward the place where morning meets sky.
“Because you were hurt,” he says, and every word lands heavy. “And I didn’t want to take anything more from you. Because I didn’t trust myself to get it right. Because I didn’t think I deserved it.”
There’s no cruelty in the words, just the facts, bare and tired and worn at the edges like everything else they’ve carried this far. Jason’s never been cruel. Just scared of what he could ruin if he touched it too hard.
“I would’ve said yes,” Tim says. No blame in it. Just another fact. “I would’ve let you.”
Jason meets his gaze. There’s nothing guarded in his face now. Just history. Just regret.
He smiles.
“I know that.”
Tim’s knuckles press white against the mug. “You said kissing me would be taking something?”
Jason doesn’t flinch. “No,” he decides, and the word sounds like it made him realize something. “I thought it would be giving you something I didn’t know how to share yet.”
That’s what finally makes Tim look at him, really look. At the man who once thought love was a battlefield, who still flinches at the thought of peace. At the man who sits next to him now, barefoot and warm, wrapped in the quiet ache of survival. At the man who wears his ring like a scar turned blessing.
“But you never kissed me,” Tim says, voice worn thin with memory. “And then I started coughing flowers.”
“I know. And you did.”
“And you still waited. But I never told you, so you didn't know.”
“I didn’t think a kiss would have saved you,” Jason whispers. “I didn’t think I’d be the reason you started dying.”
Something inside Tim eases. Not in a sharp, sudden way, but slow, like grief turning into something he can finally hold without hurting.
He leans in again. Slower, this time. Sadder. But real. Not reaching, just arriving.
“You’re the reason I’m still alive,” he says, mouth brushing Jason’s like a prayer. “That’s enough.”
Enough – but even as he says it, Tim doesn’t quite believe it. Not fully. He wants to, wants to plant roots in those words, but the wind’s still blowing too hard.
“Hey. It’s alright. I’m not going anywhere.” Jason’s hand rises, gentle as breath, to brush beneath Tim’s eye. “And it’s okay to always ask for more. You’re allowed to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Tim exhales, shaky. “And if it does?”
It’s Jason’s turn to kiss him. There – the kiss says, placed on Tim’s lips. Tim lets himself snuggle closer, careful of their half-full mugs, letting Jason’s arm wrap around him and shield him from the morning’s chill.
Jason’s answer is simple. Certain.
“Then I guess I’ll have to catch it and put it back on.”